


Of Shipwrights, Swishy Skirts, and Snogging

by Camelittle



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Abuse of precious porcelain objects, Also original superpower of shipping, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Banter, Fluff and Crack, Gwen Ships It, Humor, IDEK what these tags are any more sorry tag wranglers, In which Gwen is at her wits end, Insults, Intervention, M/M, Or rather insert of someone else other than self, Original Character(s), Percussionists, Pixies, Self-Insert, Superheroes, Swishy Skirts, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Whimsical use of celestial orchestras, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 19:05:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13596435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Camelittle/pseuds/Camelittle
Summary: In which Gwen has occasion to call for help. Because otherwise...“You’ve got to do something!” hissed Gwen in an urgent voice. “They’ve been at it all day! At this rate, there won’t be any destiny. All that there will be left of Camelot is a well-thumbed thesaurus, broken china, and a lot of frustrated jaw clenching.”





	Of Shipwrights, Swishy Skirts, and Snogging

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merlocked18](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merlocked18/gifts).



> For the amazing Merlocked18 on the auspicious occasion of her birthday. Dearest Merls - wishing you a happy and Merthurtastic birthday <3 <3 <3 Huge thanks to Fifty-Fifty for beta-reading, hand-holding and general ~~enablement~~ hand-holding!

 

The call came at twelve fifteen. By twelve twenty, Merlocked18 was nearly ready. She was a superhero, after all. Superheroes needed to be able to scramble into their super-gear at a moment’s notice.

To crown her outfit, Merlocked18 pulled on her (only slightly stained) magical boots and tapped them together as a last check. There was a faint, just-in-hearing jingling noise, and the world stuttered on its axis. She glanced at her watch. Twelve o’clock. Sure enough it, had jumped back precisely twenty minutes. Great. The device was working.

Taking in a deep breath, she closed her eyes and whispered the incantation, tapping her boots together all the while, and counting carefully, tracing back the origin of the call. There was a giddy moment of, well, giddiness. Her skin tingled.

Blinking her eyes open, she found herself upon the stone steps of an ancient citadel. Its turrets gleamed and flags fluttered gaily in the breeze. The flags bore an emblem: a dragon, rearing up upon its hind limbs.

Seeing an immediate opportunity for improvement, she wriggled her nose. There was a far-off sound of a glockenspiel, or perhaps a xylophone, or maybe even a vibraphone. She wasn’t sure; the sound effects of the spell varied, depending on the current availability of heavenly percussionists.

Abruptly, the dragon motif disappeared from the flags, replaced with that of a rainbow.

Nodding, with an air of satisfaction, she began to mount the stairs with purposeful strides.

“Can I help you?” said a kind-faced woman. She was clad in a swishy yellow frock. Upon her head, a cascade of unruly curls tumbled from her golden circlet. She flounced from side to side, skirts held out, so that they swished and swished.

 _And why not?_ Thought Merlocked18. _If you’ve got a swishy skirt, then swish away._ And then she realised who this vision in yellow was.

“Queen Guinevere!” she gasped. Remembering herself, she curtseyed down low.

“Don’t be silly! Call me Gwen.” Gwen pulled a protesting Merlocked18 to her feet, and smiled warmly. “You’re new here, aren’t you? You look strangely familiar, though? It’s something about your outfit… it’s just… it looks just like something that Merlin would wear! Not that that’s bad, I mean, Merlin’s a bit scruffy, yes, but he’s my friend, and his scarfs are quite, well, unique, I suppose...”

“Oh, thank you!” said Merlocked18 delighted. “You noticed! It took me ages to distress the scarf!”

“Erm... okay! The colour suits you!” said Gwen, a little wild-eyed. Evidently she had not come across the idea of distressing scarfs before. “What brings you to Camelot?”

“I’m on a solemn mission.” Merlocked18 darted a glance from left to right, before continuing in a conspiratorial whisper. “From the future. I understand you called for a superhero to come to the rescue?”

“Oh, thank God!” Gwen embraced her warmly. “You’re the matchmaker!”

“That’s me,” beamed Merlocked18. “Matchmaking is my superpower. And shipping, which is kind of like matchmaking, only with, erm, ships. Um.”

“You make ships as well?” Gwen’s eyes were round with admiration. “You're a shipwright?”

“Um, well. In a manner of speaking!” said Merlocked18, telling herself that yes, relationships definitely counted as ships, and she would not hear otherwise. Besides which, The Shipwright had a pleasantly superhero-ish ring to it.

“You come in the nick of time.” Gwen turned and hurried up the steps. Her skirts swished. Swishy Swishy! “Not a moment too soon. I mean, you’ll hear it before you see it. The bickering, I mean. If only they would bloody well snog, and get on with it! But it’s like they don’t even hear anything else...”

Sure enough, as they ascended and pushed past two very well put-together guards, the sound of raised, squabbling voices drifted across the courtyard.

“Don’t worry, Gwen.” As Merlocked18 followed Gwen along a stone-flagged corridor, and up some more steps, her heart raced in anticipation. Or was it exertion? Jesus, there were a lot of damned steps in Camelot. “After all, I’m a shipper. I mean shipwright. _The_ Shipwright, in fact. Making reluctant-yet-somehow-desperate boys snog is my bread and butter.”

The voices were getting louder. They seemed to be coming from behind a heavy, oak door. As they approached, Merlocked18 could make out actual words. It wasn't difficult. They were practically shouting. 

“Pompous, condescending twatwaffle!” one voice was saying. "I reckon, you know, one night, when you were sleeping, a mouse must have, like, crawled in through one of your ears and made a nest in there, because there’s nothing but fluff between them now.”

“Huh. At least I’m not a scrawny, scruffy, incompetent nit-wit with all the grace of an angry warthog,” replied a second voice. “And the fragrance, too! What did you bathe in, this morning? Pig swill?”

“That’s because you’re an unenlightened, thuggish wall of muscle with all the brains of a pregnant chimaera and none of the charm.”

“I’ll show _you_ a wall of muscle!”

“Oh yeah?” The voice cracked slightly. “I’d like to see you try!”

“Merlin!” growled the second voice. There was a loud crunching sound, as if something heavy yet fragile had encountered something terminally hard and unrelentingly solid.

“Now look what you’ve done, clotpole, that was Gwen’s favourite…”

“Fix it then, you useless tom-fool of a warlock!”

“I’d have a lot less fixing to do if you weren’t such a…”

“ _Merlin!_ ”

Oh, dear. Merlocked18 grimaced. It was even worse than she’d thought.   

“You’ve got to do something!” hissed Gwen in an urgent voice. “They’ve been at it all day! At this rate, there won’t be any destiny. All that there will be left of Camelot is a well-thumbed thesaurus, broken china, and a lot of frustrated jaw clenching.”

As if to underline her plea, something else heavy crashed against the door, followed by an indistinct tinkling noise.

“Please!” pleaded a white-faced Gwen. “My favourite china…”

“Don’t panic, Gwen.” A grim-faced Merlocked18 rolled up her sleeves. “Leave it to me.”  She lifted her hand to rap sharply on the door.

There was a surprised silence from the other side.

“There’s someone at the door, _Mer_ lin.”

“Your observational skills once more astound me, Sire.”

“Aren’t you going to answer it, then, you lazy, lacklustre excuse for a manservant?”

“Bloody well answer it yourself, clotpole!”

“Wait. Did you just give me an order?”

“I might have done…”

“Enjoy it, did you…?”

“It was not… unpleasant…”

“Why, you…”

Merlocked18 shook her head. They were too far gone even to answer the door. This called for an intervention. Squaring her shoulders, she grasped the handle and thrust through.

She entered a sumptuously furnished chamber, its walls hung with rich tapestries. A huge four-poster bed dominated the centre of the room, the bedspread dyed a deep shade of scarlet, resplendent with a dragon picked out in gold-thread. She snorted and changed it to a rainbow with a surreptitious twitch of her nose. 

From opposite sides of the room, two faces gaped at her. At her feet, shards of crockery littered the bare oak floorboards.

“Who…?” Arthur started.

“Who? You…” echoed Merlin. He lifted a shaky finger and pointed at her. “You’re wearing my clothes! That’s creepy!” His eyes flashed golden, and abruptly his scarf changed from blue to red. “There, now we’re different.”

Merlocked18 looked down at her own scarf, and wriggled her nose. She smirked as a jangle of far-off percussion heralded the action of her spell, and while she watched, her scarf also changed colour, its new hue identical to that of Merlin’s.

“Sorcery!” he gasped.

“Yes!” she said, in a purring voice. She strode over to him, and put one finger under his chin. “Resistance is futile! Think of me as a sort of magical police officer. You must do as I say. Um. Unless you don’t want to, because that really would be creepy. Of course.  Hahaha.” She laughed, maniacally. Quite liking the sound, she laughed again. “Hahahahaha!”

Hells bells. He was even cuter in real life than she had imagined. She couldn’t resist giving his chin a bit of a tickle.

“Stop that!” he said, but he giggled anyway, making his dimples punch cute little holes in his cheeks.

She drew away with a regretful sigh.

“Anyway, this is all such fun but I really can’t stop,” she said. “I’ve only got ten minutes left on my time-turner.” She tapped the dial of her watch, anxiously. “Make that nine. Shit. You need to get on with it.” She pointed at Arthur. “You! You handsome prat. Come over here and snog your warlock.”

“What?” Arthur gaped. “But he’s… I mean, I’m... “ His face turned a similar shade of scarlet to her scarf. “I couldn’t possibly… I mean, Guinevere…”

“...is standing outside," said Merlocked18, rolling her eyes. "Wishing that you’d bloody well get on with it so she doesn’t lose any more of her favourite china. You oblivious clotpole.”

“Clotpole? No-one’s allowed to call me that!” Arthur said, indignantly.

“Ahem.” Merlin coughed. “Technically speaking, I think you’ll find that _I_ …”

“Too much talking, not enough kissing!” interrupted Merlocked18. She tapped her watch again. “Come on! Your face, his face, glued together.” She gesticulated between the two said faces, adding some vigorous elbow action in case of any lingering doubts. “Pronto.”  

Arthur opened his mouth, eyebrows puckered in a frown, and drew in a long breath, as if to yell out something at the top of his voice.

“Guards!” he bellowed.

Except he didn’t. It came out more as a sort of “Guar-mmmfffff!” because Merlin took the opportunity of his distraction to tackle the king onto the bed and embark upon some enthusiastic and unambiguous snogging.

Merlocked18 definitely did not watch or snap any pictures of this long-awaited epiphany with her phone. Dear me, no. As if she’d do a thing like that! Well, maybe a couple of snaps, just for quality control. She was a professional shipwright, after all. Obviously she needed to be able to demonstrate past successes to potential future customers.

Nevertheless, although she did not dally, dear me no, inexplicably by the time she left the room, she only had a minute left of her spell.

“There. My job here is done.” She brushed her hands together with a satisfied air. “I don’t think they’ll be damaging any more china for a while.”

“About bloody time,” said the Queen. “At last!” She grinned and held out her arms. The two women embraced happily.

But then, somewhere in the ether, the cosmological percussion-players of doom finished counting their celestial five hundred bars rest, and clonked the stellar xylophone with a spectacular flourish of birch and hard-rubber mallets.

“Oh no!” Merlocked18 drew away. Gwen’s form, originally so vivid, was already growing indistinct. Merlocked18 could see her own dressing-table beginning to materialise through Gwen’s skirts. “I must go! But do call again, if you need me! I can help with any ships, for example, if you are pining for anyone… and I noticed that your guards kept looking at each others’ lips…”  

“Thank you!” Gwen called in a faint voice suffused with wind chimes. The cosmic orchestra really was going to town today! “But whatever should I call you?”

Merlocked18 yelled into the ether, unsure whether Gwen could hear her any more. And that was the end of that.

*

Far away, in a land of myth and a time of magic, peace descended on Camelot. Albeit one that was punctuated with vigorous slurping noises and the occasional, heart-felt groan.

“Oh, Shipwright!” Gwen whispered, leaning back against the door, thinking of the Lady Morgana’s lacy handkerchief, of her soft fragrance as she glided across the banqueting hall. “Thank you, dear Shipwright! Please come again soon! I fear I have more work for you to do...”

*

In another, remote and slightly tangential corner of the universe, a chorus of percussion-playing pixies mopped their brows and flopped onto the floor in an exhausted heap.

“Phew,” said Bert, who was in charge of glocks and vibes and xylos and that. “That was a tricky one!”

“Speak fer yourself,” said Oswald, in disappointed tones. “Too bloody easy, if you ask me. A couple o' tinkles on the wind chimes was all I got. I didn’t even get round to me triangle! And poor ol’ Ethel, poised to bonk the bloody timpani for bloomin’ hours. Worl. A bit of a Dun Dun DUH and that was it, all over. And as for Florence, worl, I mean, she di’n’t even get a single bong on the gong! That bloody warlock was a bit premature, if you ask me.”

“I don’t know,” said Ethel, thoughtfully, squinting at her skirts and swishing them from side to side. “I think this noise is nice. What do you think, chaps?” She swished a little more. “Could this be the next big thing in percussion? Swishy, swishy! Swishy, swishy?”

Bert and Oswald exchanged puzzled glances.

“I like it,” said Florence, nodding. "I think it's got legs."

 

*END*

 

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: not my characters, I'm not getting paid for this. 
> 
> In particular, the Merlocked18 in this fic is both less talented and less amazing than the real life one. Go and check out her [SWOONWORTHY ARTS](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Merlocked18)!
> 
> Also, I had a lot of ~~enablement~~ from the amazing people in chat, particularly Plutonia, Pelydryn, Moonflower and Woody. I can't remember who suggested that Merls should be cosplaying Merlin, and that her costume should change to whatever his does, but whichever one of you it was, thank you for the amazing plot bunny. :)


End file.
